Abstract

Some philosophers have distinguished history from nature by speaking of the former as the mind-affected world. Such a distinction would seem to account for the fact that we have a sense of belonging to and participating in the movement of history and of being able to change it by our thoughts and plans. If we take this claim metaphysically, then history would be the domain that we have influenced, and nature the domain that we have failed to influence. Vico and Dilthey are known for their thesis that we can only properly know what we have made. This gives us a special access to history that we do not have to nature. Actually, their verum-factum thesis can be extended to nature itself if one is a transcendental idealist. In his Reflexionen zur Logik, Kant writes that “we comprehend only what we can make ourselves,” but means it to apply to our understanding of nature. Kant does not construe making in terms of physical activity that introduces changes in things. Making is conceived purely formally so that it applies to the mathematical and categorical structures that the human mind extends to nature.